He claims he fights for "Justice and Haqq". Haqq is the Arabic word for "truth". Galloway also says he will ask some Arab emirs to give him £5 million to help renovate the city's decrepit Odeon. He claims the emirs are afraid of him and don't want him to "wage jihad" on them.

In Islam there's only an Ummah. And even people with blue eyes are welcome in that Ummah ... Never will I forget the people who are bleeding elsewhere in the Ummah.

Interestingly, George Galloway gives out his phone number to the crowd. It is: 0789 40585465.

So if you want to call him up and tell him what a useless moron you think he is, now you know how.

France has a domestic national security alert system called Vigipirate. This is a graduated, colour-coded system that calls for different levels of government readiness and response depending on the anticipated threat. Some alert levels require the military to participate in street patrols. Because of the Mohamed Merah jihad spree, France is in a heightened state of readiness and there are soldiers on the streets now.

It was for that reason that three soldiers found themselves in Montepellier railway station on Thursday. They were surrounded by a mob of about fifteen "jeunes" who insulted them, praised Mohamed Merah and said it was going to be necessary to follow his example and attack soldiers.

Once the mob had dispersed, police were notified and searched the vicinity. They arrested three teenagers, aged between 15 and 18.

In this excerpt, the author talks with his old friend, Mick, who is moving out of the now Muslim-colonised area where he has lived all his life.

“Well, it’s been changing for years Danny. Our lot’s moved out, they’ve moved in. But you know me. I made a lot of them welcome. Helped out with jobs and stuff with the neighbours when they needed it. When our new neighbours moved in next door I invited them round a few times. I wasn’t happy with his wife having the face veil on all the time, but there you go.

“One day he’s sitting in our front room and he’s looking around like, admiringly. And he says to me, ‘just you and the woman here yes?’ I said ‘me and my wife, yes’. He nods and says ‘just you and the woman, no children, very big house for two people. If you sell you tell me yes?’

“And that was it Danny. Literally, from that moment on. Aggravation, day and night. A football being bounced against our bedroom wall at two and three in the morning. Constant bother. I tried talking to them, reasoning with them. Nothing. For fifteen months.

“I called the Council’s anti-social unit and they gave me the run-around long enough. I kept calling them and getting shoved from one number to another, before they said it was a police matter. But could I get anyone to come and deal with it?

“Finally one Sunday afternoon I’ve had my Yorkshire puddings and roast and a glass of red and I’m settling down to watch some sport on the telly. The phone goes and it’s the police saying ‘can we come see you’? I said yes.

“They said ‘20 minutes’ and sure enough, 20 minutes later there’s a knock at the door. And its two Asian officers – actually, I tell a lie, one lad was probably half caste. But I hadn’t a prayer. It was all my problem, basically my imagination! I might as well have been talking to the wall.”

Mick, however, had the last laugh.

“Well I wasn’t bloody selling it to this character next door who wanted it for his 18-year-old son and the wife they were planning on bringing in from Pakistan.”

Mick also knew that he hadn’t a chance of selling the house to a white family. He was already one of the last few remaining on the street that in my childhood had been a colony of Irish Catholics.

So he went across the road to some other Asian neighbours and said he would be selling, had a firm idea of the price he wanted, and they had 24 hours to make an offer before he put the house up with agents.

“It was funny. They were straight across in no time – except it wasn’t the bloke across the road but three others. They said they wanted the house, had to have the house, and then of course started playing silly buggers over the price. I told them ‘stop there, leave now, because you’re wasting both our time. Either come back with a serious offer by the next day or that’s that.’

“They left and were back again in no time. My wife couldn’t handle the horse-trading though, she had to leave the house!”

With a twinkle in his eye – he obviously enjoyed getting his pound of flesh – Mick explains how they agreed on a price and then his purchasers started on the ‘we both agree we pay this price and then we give you rest in cash’ routine – but how he eventually got things sorted.

“I managed to keep the news from the bloke next door until a week or two before we were done and dusted,” says Mick. “I was in the back garden and his son was looking over the wall. They’d built a four-and-a-half-foot breeze block wall round it for some reason. I was about 15 feet away, doing a bit of gardening, and this lad looks at me and says ‘you fucking bastard’.”

Mick chuckles.

“We bought a lovely little bungalow up near the golf course,” he adds. “We can sit out of an evening, nice and peaceful. It’s lovely.”

“A bit of peace of mind,” I say. “That’s worth its weight. But you were still forced out of Daw Green, Mick. We’re still on the retreat.”

Mick thinks, smiles ruefully and shakes his head.“No, not on the retreat. This battle’s lost, lad.”

According to Europe 1, the arrests included Forsane Alizza’s leader, Mohammed Achamlane.

Founded in 2010, Forsane Alizza was banned on February 29, 2012, by French Interior Minister, Claude Gueant.

Before the Toulouse attacks, the group was known for its provocative demonstrations, such as last year’s protests against a French ban on worshippers praying in the streets.

France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim community, estimated at between 3 to 5 million people.

According to Jean-Yves Camus, a researcher at the Paris-based think-tank, IRIS (Institut de Relations Internationales et Strategiques), Forsane Alizza is a group comprised of mostly young people who have been recently radicalized.

“Members of Forsane Alizza espouse jihadism and Salafism, but they have very little knowledge of Islam. They are primarily an attention-seeking group that wants to get noticed,” said Camus.

Camus said he observed a recent demonstration outside the Paris mayor’s office against extremist Christians when Forsane Alizza members showed up in “Afghan outfits”.

“They did not try to hide, but rather they wanted to be filmed and photographed as much as possible," he said.

Forsane Alizza first made the headlines in June 2010, when ten of its members organized a boycott of McDonald's in the central French city of Limoges, accusing the US company of being a “slave of Israel”. A few months ago also, the group burned copies of France’s civil codes to protest the law banning the burqa, the full Islamic veil.

In early 2012, French Interior Minister Claude Gueant called for the banning of the group as it was "intolerable to have a group calling for armed struggle in our country."

But Achamlane has denied that his movement is violent. The February banning of the group, the Forsane Alizza website bore the notice, "The Forsane Alizza group is dissolved; however, we still face severe pressure despite the end of our activities."

George Galloway, the former Labour MP who has made a career out of pandering to Muslims, has just won a sensational victory as a Respect candidate in the Bradford West by-election, capturing what has long been a secure Labour seat.

It should be a lesson to all the mainstream parties that it is folly to try and play the Muslim game. The Muslims will pretend to go along with the Establishment parties, then, once they have achieved a decisive enough share of the population, simply let them drop and elect their own man. This is exactly the pattern we saw in Tower Hamlets. Now it recurs in Bradford.

But is this an honest victory? Reading the press accounts, there are various subtle hints that some skulduggery may have been afoot.

Throughout the campaign, none of the polling predicted this result. Galloway owes his victory to a mysterious late surge.

In the last 48 hours, Ed Miliband's circle started to voice private concerns that a late push by Galloway among the large Asian community might drag the Labour vote down and propel the Conservative candidate to victory. But few Labour officials or outside experts were predicting that Galloway would poll more than 20%, let alone win the seat.

But in the final 48 hours, the Respect vote started to surge, especially among Asian youth, opening up a serious possibility that Galloway could be taken back to the Commons only two years after losing in 2010.

Labour's nerves in Bradford started to show early in the evening when reports emerged that postal ballots showed Labour and Galloway running neck and neck.

At the weekend Galloway held a highly successful 1,000-strong rally, winning the support of some leading mosques, even though the Bradford-born Labour candidate Imran Hussein is a Pakistani Muslim and deputy leader of the council.

Bookmakers Ladbrokes said the result was the largest by-election loss in the company's history. They had suspended betting on Thursday afternoon after seeing a surge of support for the Respect candidate.

I recall once, when I saw the athlete Carl Lewis defeated in the Olympic 100m sprint final by Ben Johnson, Lewis, interviewed shortly after the race, said Johnson's victory was "like magic". This, of course, was a hint that something wasn't quite right about it. Later Johnson was found guilty of taking drugs and stripped of his medal. Reading the opinions on Galloway's victory expressed by various politicians and publications today, it strikes me that there is a hint of Lewis' "like magic" about them. Maybe it's just my imagination.

Was this another case of Muslim vote fraud? It's notable that the Conservatives were issuing dramatic warnings about vote fraud during the by-election campaign. They even published and distributed a booklet on the subject.

The Conservative Party is delivering a new booklet in the hope of preventing postal vote fraud in the Bradford West by-election.

The ‘Don’t Let Anyone Steal Your Vote’ information booklets are being delivered through doors by its campaigners.

Kris Hopkins, Conservative MP for Keighley, said it was up to all the political parties to stamp out postal vote fraud and that Bradford’s politics had been blighted by it for too long, damaging people’s confidence in the democratic process.

Councillor Glen Miller, leader of the Tory group on Bradford Council, said he believed the booklets would be welcomed and help “encourage residents to be careful with their voting registration slips and report any cases of voting fraud.”

The party’s candidate in the by-election Jackie Whiteley said: “We need to make sure that everyone fights an election that results in a true representation of voters’ wishes. Only then can the people of Bradford West get the fair outcome they deserve.”

The booklet comes after the Respect party’s candidate George Galloway outlined his own fears that postal vote fraud might be taking place in the constituency.

He has already written to Bradford Council chief executive Tony Reeves, who is the returning officer overseeing the election, asking what measures are in place to tell voters of their rights – he also wants to know what steps are being taken to monitor any potential problems.

According to Mr Galloway, 10,000 people have registered for postal votes in the by-election. He said he was “vehemently opposed to the postal voting system on demand” because it was “wide open to fraud.”

Suzan Hemingway, Bradford Council’s city solicitor and acting deputy returning officer, said: “The Council and West Yorkshire Police always deal robustly with election issues to support democracy, so that the public can have full confidence in their outcome and that any allegations of electoral fraud are always reported to the police.

Bizarrely, George Galloway, too, warned about vote fraud during the election campaign. He claimed to believe that it would mainly benefit the established parties.

I am writing to you about my fears that this by-election may be corrupted by large-scale fraud and the illegal acquisition of votes.

As you know, some 10,000 electors have been registered for postal votes in this election. As you will also know the majority of these voters have been signed up for postal votes by activists in the major political parties. This is done to make it easier to ensure their “core” voters cast their votes in elections. It is possible that this encouragement is done legally, but it is a system also wide open to illegal pressure and other fraudulent practices.

I have witnessed this large-scale corruption of the electoral process in Tower Hamlets where I was MP for five years. And we have seen a number of individuals jailed with long sentences over the last few years, including here in Bradford for voting fraud.

In my understanding postal vote fraud may take place in any of four ways. Firstly, voters who don’t live here or who have died or who may never have existed may be registered to vote. Secondly, votes may be redirected to other addresses where they are then cast by other people. Thirdly, blank ballot papers may be collected by “friends and family” and then filled in by other people. Fourthly, voters may be intimidated into voting for particular candidates through the loss of the secrecy of the ballot box.

I have campaigned for the last 8 years on this issue but, despite some modest tightening up of the system, it remains wide open to fraud, especially of the fourth kind which is so difficult to prove. That is why I remain vehemently opposed to the postal voting system on demand. Sadly it is of such benefit to the major political parties, nothing has been done to change this flawed system.

I am particularly concerned about fraud in the Bradford West by-election because the election is likely to be very close and it is in these circumstances that corruption most often occurs. I am writing to you today to ask what measures you are taking to inform voters of their rights and obligations and of the penalties for fraudulently casting votes in elections and what steps are being taken by you, in conjunction with the police, to monitor the situation and encourage reporting of any suspected corrupt practice.

Yours faithfully George Galloway Respect candidate in the Bradford West by-election

“Manifestations of racism and xenophobia appear to be on the rise in Switzerland. Disturbing political campaigns with aggressive, insulting slogans against foreigners are tendencies of great concern,” the letter read.

Hammarberg said that he recognized “the value and importance of an open political debate”, but went on to say that freedom of expression should not be absolute.

“It can and at times must be restricted by the authorities in order to safeguard the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others,” he said.

A cause for concern, the Commissioner also noted that “political discourse of xenophobic and racist nature is... not criminally sanctioned by the courts”, and he called for an overhaul of the Swiss criminal law “in order to put an end to impunity for xenophobic and racist public discourse.”

My plan for Innsbruck: Love for the homeland instead of Moroccan thieves

Charges have been filed against August Penz, a Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) mayoral candidate for Innsbruck over a campaign poster he has been using. It says "My plan for Innsbruck: Love for the homeland instead of Moroccan thieves".

UPDATE: The Moroccan government has now officially denounced the FPO initiative and declared it will participate in the legal proceedings against it.

The Moroccan embassy in Vienna issued an angry statement attacking what it called the FPOe's "defamatory and discriminatory behaviour" and accusing it of "humiliating, stigmatising and discriminating against" the Moroccan community.

"The embassy condemns in the strongest possible terms this hurtful practice aimed only at winning votes at the cost of respect for fundamental human rights," the Austria Press Agency (APA) quoted the statement as saying.

And in Rabat junior foreign minister Youssef Amrani protested in a meeting with the Austrian ambassador against what he called "a xenophobic act", the ministry said in a statement.

Great article here from the Commentator. It's sad to see so many Counterjihadists still ludicrously proclaiming themselves to be human rights activists when, if they had analysed the situation properly, they would realise that the human rights framework and mentality is the very thing that allows the Muslims to continue making their advances.

After student Liam Stacey is jailed for 56 days for a racist tweet about Fabrice Muamba, we need to re-think our approach to free speech, and learn a bit of history

In 1742, David Hume could write, “Nothing is more apt to surprise a foreigner, than the extreme liberty, which we enjoy in this country, of communicating whatever we please to the public, and of openly censuring every measure, entered into by the king or his ministers.”

Hume may have overstated his case somewhat, as prosecutions for blasphemous libel did take place at the time. But compared to just about anywhere else in Europe, Britons enjoyed unprecedented freedom of speech in the 18th century.

To a foreigner fond of British culture, not least its tradition of liberty, Hume’s words now evoke a mixture of sadness and bewilderment. How did a nation that once had the freest press in the world evolve into a society where (however offensive or morally objectionable) the distribution of religious caricatures, the comparison of Islam with terrorism, expressing religiously based objections to homosexuality and using racially “abusive” or “insulting” language on social media result in criminal conviction?

Authors such as Nick Cohen, Douglas Murray and Keenan Malik have done much to clarify how ideological multiculturalism has been the principle force leading to undermining freedom of expression in the UK, through the promulgation of so-called hate-speech laws (misleadingly labeled public order laws).

But the nefarious effects of multiculturalism might not have moved from the imposition of political correctness and self-censorship (which is serious enough) to the realm of criminal law without a supportive legal matrix.

That matrix was provided by international human rights conventions adopted at the UN during the Cold War era. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Racial Discrimination (ICERD) made it an obligation to prohibit certain forms of hate speech under international human rights law.

A striking feature of the negotiations of these conventions was the British government’s principled yet ultimately unsuccessful battle against a bloc of states, led by the Soviet Union and its allies, which were those introducing and insisting on hate speech laws in international human rights conventions.

The battle over whether human rights should simply oblige governments to respect freedom of expression or also include an obligation to prohibit certain forms of controversial speech began during the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) after the end of WWII.

The Soviet Union was adamant that states should be obliged to restrict “fascist” expressions and political parties. Of course, the Soviet definition of fascism could very easily include parliamentary democracy.

The UK was not against allowing certain restrictions on freedom of expression per se. But the British position was that restrictions should primarily be limited to the incitement to violence and should not be an obligation imposed on governments.

Human rights should protect individuals from totalitarian measures, not provide pretexts for prohibiting dissent. Through the hard work of the UK and the US, the Soviet proposals to include a hate speech provision in the UDHR was avoided.

Yet the issue resurfaced when the member states of the UN were to adopt the legally binding ICCPR and the ICERD. ICCPR Article 20 (2) states that, “Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law”.

The original American proposal had been limited to the prohibition of incitement to violence, a position supported by the UK. However, once again the Soviet Union and allies proposed sweeping prohibitions on free speech.

During the debates, the UK representative argued eloquently for the importance of freedom of expression even in controversial matters. The UK warned against political misuse of the proposal: “Unscrupulous governments like nothing better than moral justification for their actions.” Extremism should not be fought by criminal law but through open debate, since “the power of democracy to combat propaganda lay . . . in the ability of its citizens to arrive at reasoned decisions in the face of conflicting appeals.”

When challenged by the Soviet Union, the UK representative pointed out that during World War II, Hitler’s Mein Kampf had not been banned in the UK, and that its government “would maintain and fight for its conception of liberty as resolutely as it had fought against Hitler.”

But ultimately, the efforts of the UK were in vain, and in 1961 Article 20 was adopted by a large majority. Not a single Western democracy voted in favor of this provision, and almost all voted against. Upon ratification, the UK “reserve[d] the right not to introduce any further legislation” citing its concern for freedom of expression, association and assembly.

During the negotiations about the ICERD in the early sixties, the Communist states were once again able to dominate the outcome, aided by former colonies whose representatives saw hate speech provisions as a way to fight apartheid and colonial-era era racism.

Accordingly, article 4(a) states that “all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination […]” shall be criminalized. ICERD also obliges states parties to “declare illegal and prohibit” racist organizations.

Once again the UK and the US, along with the Nordic countries, sought to counter such limitations on freedom of expression and association. In the words of the UK representative, Lady Gaitskell, “Speech should be free, but incitement to violence should be repressed.”

Lady Gaitskell was even more to the point when rejectingICERD’s restrictions on freedom of association, insisting that the UK “defended the right of all organizations, even Nazi and communist ones, to make their views known even though those organizations held views, which the majority of the people utterly repudiated”.

In the event, the ICERD was adopted unanimously, but along with a number of other states the UK entered a reservation aimed at safeguarding freedom of expression and association. But the principle battle had been lost as totalitarian and authoritarian states were allowed to turn the concept of human rights into a form of“newspeak” legitimizing the very repression that human rights were supposed to protect against.

In the era of identity politics and multiculturalism that followed, it would lead to the current state of affairs where mainstream politicians and human rights activists all agree on the need for criminalizing speech. It is nothing short of astonishing that some 50 years ago the UK was leading the fight against the very illiberal laws that it is now enforcing rigorously.

While contemporary proponents of hate-speech laws seldom share the same ideals as the Communist states that championed these laws, they rarely reflect that such laws are a legacy of totalitarian states in which freedom of expression was systematically violated.

Nor do they mention that these states had a clear interest in legitimizing and justifying their repression with the use of human rights language.

Today the international human rights agenda is thoroughly conflated not only with socio-political biases, but also with campaigns for tolerance and against racisms that, while generally laudable, often conflict with the high human rights ideal of protecting one’s enemy’s freedom of speech.

Surely the totalitarian origins of hate speech laws should prompt Britons, and indeed all lovers of freedom, to reject hate-speech laws as incompatible with human rights.

Not only do such laws violate freedom of conscience and expression and corrupt the public discourse, but there is no evidence that they work as the ultimately futile prosecution of leading Nazis during Weimar Germany and the existence of hate speech laws in the Former Yugoslavia testify.

The UK has entered reservations to the ICCPR and ICERD, and EU laws on hate speech include a loophole. Nothing prevents Britain from drastically overhauling its hate speech laws so that once again “extreme liberty” becomes the norm in the realm of free speech—nothing, that is, other than the force of prevailing intellectual fashion and moral lassitude.

Jacob Mchangama is director of legal affairs in the independent think tank Center for Political Studies (CEPOS) based in Copenhagen. He is also an external lecturer in international human rights law at the University of Copenhagen

Under the motto "Freedom instead of Islam", the German anti-Islam PRO-NRW movement has launched a competition to find new anti-Islam cartoons and artworks. There are prizes of 200 euros for the winner, and 150 and 100 euros for the second and third-place entries respectively. The artworks - which can be cartoons, collages, films, installations - will be exhibited outside controversial mosques and Salafist Islamic centres on a courageous 25-mosque tour which the movement is planning to undertake.

The action is a sign that the values of freedom must be actively represented and defended ... There can be no areas where artistic freedom and the freedom to express opinions does not apply. The attempts at politically correct regulation of democratic criticism of Islam are not worthy of a free, constitutional state and only show that we have already gone some way towards totalitarian Islamism.

Jörg Uckermann, Chairmain of PRO-NRW

Uckermann is a former burgomeister (district mayor) who once represented the mainstream conservative CDU/CSU party grouping (Merkel's party) in Germany. NRW means North-Rhine Westphalia, a heavily Muslim-colonised region of Germany.

We must not accept that under the protection of religious freedom areas are established that may not be criticised. As a totalitarian ideology characterised by a narrow, political worldview, Islam itself tolerates no criticism. We have seen what the effects of a religiously-themed cartoon are. There was massive resistance to it. In these cases, the freedom of press and religion was loudly emphasised. But now we are seeing that state institutions which are actually obligated to show religious neutrality are also sanctioning criticism of Islam. Political groups or media are being criminalised. High-profile activists like Michael Mannheimer, who warn of the islamisation of Europe, are being prosecuted as criminals. Thus the free, democratic constitutional order incorporates the intolerant standards of Islam. We need loud protests to be raised up against this. With the media and cartoon competition, PRO NRW wants to send a message. Citizens, who who are committed to maintaining the rights of freedom and who criticise an anti-freedom religious community now need to raise their voices.

Racist actions and threats fell in France last year (-7% compared to 2010), but anti-Muslim racism (sic) exploded (+33.6%) according to the annual report of the Commission nationale consultative des droits de l'Homme [National Consultative Commission on Human Rights].

..."There is a growing rejection of everything that relates to Muslims and Islam," explains Marc Leyenberger, member of the Commission nationale consultative des droits de l'homme. "There are threats and provocations against Muslims, but there are also actions against persons and property: vandalism against mosques or profanation of cemeteries. All that already existed in previous years, but the number has increased considerably in 2011".

For Sabrina Goldman, executive delegate of LICRA (Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme) [International League Against Racism and Antisemitism], this brutal increase in anti-Muslim racism is explained by the political climate of recent months: "We are seeing unabashed racism from opinion formers or government representatives. Now all social phenomena are explained in relation to people's origins or religion. I see truly the extent to which that is having effects on the lives of ordinary people. People are no longer afraid of being racist in everyday life."

To prevent robberies many bank departments in certain areas are cashless - they do not handle large sums of cash and it says "cashless bank" on the door to discourage would-be bank robbers. Who robs a cashless bank and forgets to use his disquise? Idiot.

"Unmasked robber in colourful jacket robbed Nordea Bank in Copenhagen's North West

He did not do much to disquise himself or seem anonymous - the young man who Tuesday at 10:50 robbed Nordea Bank's department at Frederikssundsvej 31 (part of Nørrebrogade) in Copenhagen's North West.

He had brought a Spider Man mask with him into the bank but did not use it and left it in the bank.

'- We do not know why he did not disquise himself, now that he had brought the mask. But he never wore it and he left it in the bank. He walk to the cassier and slammed a plastic bag on the desk and demanded money. He did not threaten with a weapon but the lady at the desk was so scared that she stepped a few steps back, which made it possible for the young man to pick up the whole box with money. But since it is a 'cashless deparment' (bank department that does not handle cash) he only got a few coins and very few banknotes with him,' says Deputy PoliceCommissionerin theRobberySectionat CopenhagenPolice, ThomasDürr, to Ekstrabladet.

'- A witness saw him walk towards a small red car with four doors - probably a Toyota - so he might have been driving that, but this is unsure,' says Thomas Dürr to ekstrabladet.

The robber is described as: Man, around 25 years old, 185 cm tall. He looks like an immigrant. He wore a jacket with checkered pattern in red, blue and black, and he wore grey/black working trousers and working shoes."

Being followers of a street robber themselves, the caravan robber Muhammed, nobody should be surprised that Nørrebrogade in Copenhagen is no. 1. Translated by Nicolai Sennels, Jyllands-Posten March 27th 2012 "Here most street robberies are committed":"On some streets in Copenhagen the risk of being robbed on the street are bigger than other places. Looking over a five year period, the number of street robberies in Copenhagen is distributed like this (top 10):

For much of this year, Vienna has been obsessed with a prolific arsonist known as the FeuerTeufel (Fire Devil). Now the indications are that this Fire Devil is in fact two Fire Devils - and they are Turks.

The Turkish Fire Devils were spotted by several people on their last escapade: setting fire to the laying-in hall next to the cemetery in Josefstadt. All the eye-witnesses agree that the perpetrators were Turks. A photofit of the two fire-raisers is expected. Hopefully, it will not have Swedish-style pixellation.

One of the arsonists' previous targets was Neustadt Cathedral, shown burning in the images.

From the choice of a cemetery and a cathedral, it is reasonable to conclude that these Turks had jihad-style, anti-infidel motivations.

Another of their targets - one that they set fire to an astonishing eight times - is known as the WBO Siedlung. As far as I can tell, this is just a housing estate with some blocks of flats on it, containing 1000 residents in total. I'm not sure why the Turkish fire devils would single it out for such special attention. Perhaps it's one of the few remaining indigenous enclaves in the increasingly islamised Vienna? Could the arson campaign be like the burglary campaign in Copenhagen, where the Muslims were trying to drive out the last remaining non-Muslims?

The photo above shows Imad Ibn Ziaten, one of the soldiers shot by Mohamed Merah, being buried in Morocco. Note the Moroccan flag draped over his coffin despite the fact that he was a member of the French military.

The victims of the shooting at the Jewish school in Toulouse were buried in Israel.

Now Mohamed Merah's father has announced that he will arrange for his son to be buried in Algeria.

What's wrong with this picture?

How can the people of Europe expect their countries to be secure and happy places when they are filled with people who treat them like hotels, rather than homelands of the heart?

Toulouse gunman’s father plans to sue France over son’s death'France is a big country that had the means to take my son alive,' Mohamed Benalel Merah claims

The Islamist gunman whose murder spree shocked France will be buried in his ancestral homeland Algeria, his father told AFP Monday, adding that he planned to sue France over his son’s death.

"(God willing), I have decided to bury my son in Algeria," Mohamed Benalel Merah said, referring to his son Mohamed Merah, 23, who was shot dead by French police on Thursday in Toulouse at the end of a stand-off after his shooting attacks that killed seven.

"Mohamed has an Algerian passport and has been listed with the (Algerian) consulate in Toulouse since his birth," the elder Merah said.

He also hit out against France for having shot his son instead of taking him alive at the end of a 32-hour siege at his apartment in Toulouse.

"France is a big country that had the means to take my son alive. They could have knocked him out with gas and taken him in," he said. "They preferred to kill him."

"I will hire the biggest named lawyers and work for the rest of my life to pay (their) costs. I will sue France for having killing my son."

When the anti-Islam Pro NRW movement held a demonstration recently to protest against the construction of a giant mosque in the German city of Remscheid, it called for a minute of silence in honour of the victims of the shooting in Toulouse. As you can see, the Turkish counter-demonstrators had other ideas. They praised Allah, waved their national flag, shouted "Turkey! Turkey!" and screamed anti-Semitic slogans.

"Sundsvall, Sweden. A teacher in Sundsvall was brutally stabbed by a Moroccan in a parking lot. The woman greeted briefly on the maniac whom she did not know, and then he attacked her with a machete. The woman is seriously injured in her legs and face and is hospitalized. One eye is said to be destroyed. Soon after the man hijacked a bus with students, and stabbed their dog. The man was arrested later that same day. ... Witnesses said that the maniac with machete dealt several blows to the woman's face and to her body. ... The dog unfortunately died later at the vet. The man was Moroccan and had the Muslim name Redouan El Ouali Alami Hansen."

""My mother-in-law hit me in the face so hard that blood poured from my ear," she told me. "I didn't know anything about the outside world, I couldn't speak the language and didn't know anything about money."

When Qawal hurt her leg after being thrown down the stairs, her mother-in-law came with her to the doctor so she was afraid to ask for help.

"They kept me a prisoner in the house. Once I was locked in the upstairs bedroom for 13 days," said Qawal.

"I thought the only way I am going to get out is through the upstairs window or by killing myself. I just wanted to end it."

Qawal finally escaped, barefoot in the snow, and ended up in the refuge.

The only way out

The suicide rate amongst south Asian women in Britain is three times the national average, as women who see no other way out of an abusive marriage take what they see as the only way out and kill themselves.

And there are between 10 and 12 cases of "honour" killing a year, all of them characterised by extreme violence.

Often several relatives are involved and the murder is sanctioned by the wider family.

Women in the Kurdish and Iranian communities are also controlled by "honour". I met a young Kurdish woman, Leila, who came to the UK to join her husband, who turned out to be violent and unstable.

"He put his hands around my throat and said he would kill me and cut me in pieces and put me in a rubbish bag - no one would know," said Leila softly.

She ended up in hospital but she was pregnant and returned to her husband until things got so bad the police were called, and she was able to eschttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifape. But running away has not ended the threat to her life.

"The dishonourable thing I did was to go into a refuge because in Kurdistan a refuge is seen as a very bad place", Leila told me."

The Brussels HQ of the Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang has been evacuated after an envelope containing white powder was received there. The envelope was addressed to the party leader, Filip Dewinter, and his daughter, An-Sofie Dewinter, who recently posed provocatively in a bikini and burka for posters that formed part of the Women Against Islamisation campaign.

Sharia4Belgium has implicity threatened Filip Dewinter by posting the poster shown above on its website, along with the slogan : "Scharia oder Jiziah". The poster shows Dewinter's head on the tip of a sword. I am not sure whether Jiziah here translates as "Jizyah", the poll tax traditionally paid by non-Muslims living under Islamic rule. SOS Heimat translates it as "Sharia or Revenge".

It's not known whether the Sharia4Belgium threat is connected with the white powder episode.

On Saturday Muslims held a public meeting in the Izards district of Toulouse to honour the memory of the dead jihadist Mohamed Merah. Reuters described the crowd as consisting of young people, "mostly girls". Photographs show several of them wearing burkas. One burka-wearing woman harangued the crowd via a loudspeaker:

We demand an end to the demonisation of Mohamed. That's it. He's dead...We share the grief and the pain of the families because it's the same grief here for us.

Police had got word of the intended gathering via the internet and a large police presence was on hand to surround the group and prevent it linking up with another.

On Friday, graffiti paying tribute to Mohamed Merah was found in Sartrouville (Yvelines).It said:

"Vive Merah", "Vengeance", "Nique la kippa" [Fuck the kippa].

Other slogans insulted Marine Le Pen and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Pages paying tribute to Mohamed Merah have also been proliferating on Facebook.

Turks colonising the German city of Mannheim have decided to rename a part of the city where they have come to predominate. Turkish associations and others recently met in the town hall to discuss the new name.

Peter Kurz, the burgomeister, proposed the name "Little Istanbul". Other suggestions included "Beyoglu” and “Kücük Istanbul”. The plan is to narrow the list of proposed names down to three then put the matter to the vote in a referendum.

Divisions or diversity? Why Employers Should Accept That They Have a Key Role to Play in Promoting Consensus and Avoiding Interracial Strife

Recent events in France and Germany illustrate how readily the prejudicial attitudes of even a few extreme and violent individuals can paralyze society. But is prejudice increasing in the general population and how can it be tackled? The Secretary-General of The Federation of European Employers (FedEE) writes....

According to Robin Chater, the Secretary-General of the Federation of European Employers (FedEE)

"Employers have a pivotal role in encouraging religious and ethnic harmony throughout society. Unless more is done to encourage racial and religious toleration through training, education and social interaction prejudice will grow and all western societies will be incurably destabilized"

The workplace is one of the principal places where people meet others from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. In a recent survey by the Department for Communities and Local Government (2012) it was found that 54% of the population mixed in this way through "work, school or college".

UK employers currently face a 11% - 15%% chance of facing a discrimination claim before an employment tribunal during the next five years.... And by 2025 this is projected by FedEE to grow to a 23% - 32% chance - with over 50% of claims being for racial discrimination.

The typical costs - in management time and legal costs - of fighting a discrimination claim that is lost by the claimant or withdrawn before a hearing is £14,000. If the claimant wins their case the costs will rise to over £30,000, in addition to the stress placed on participants and damage to a company's reputation.

In Robin Chater's view "the extension of the period from next month to two years before new employees in the UK qualify for full employment protection will encourage more employees to make discrimination and harassment claims when they are dismissed after a short period of service".

So why do less than 5% of UK employers take steps to train their workforces to understand even the legal pitfalls of discrimination - let alone the broader task of improving racial tolerance?

Some facts

18.3% of the population in England and Wales are now from a nonwhite ethnic minority group (NWEMG). This is set to increase to 27.5% by 2025.

The current concentration of the NWEMG in Greater London and along the M1/M6 corridor will disappear over the next 10-15 years and discrimination levels are likely to rise as the nonwhite population seek work in regions where traditional prejudicial attitudes remain strong.

Currently those from a Pakistani or Bangladeshi origins are 28% less likely to secure work than the population as a whole.

Recent Events

Three months ago the UK government established a new Equality Advisory and Support Service to help people make discrimination claims.

Employers now also have a better way to get across the message. The Federation of European Employers (FedEE) has produced a new training film in collaboration with the TUC and ACAS . "Without Prejudice" is a sensitive and moving drama illustrating how prejudice can arise in the workplace through a succession of seemingly harmless remarks and actions - and end up in a tribunal.

The next step

The Federation of European Employers (FedEE) will shortly be launching an initiative that will encourage employers to celebrate ethnic and religious diversity. FedEE is drawing together examples of all the best practices currently followed by employers across Europe and producing a range of media, materials and case studies that can be used in training days, intercultural events, inhouse journals and support for activities in the broader community.

Afterword

Ethnic tensions are growing around the world and Europe is not immune to the upheavals. In fact, as racial minorities grow in significance attitudes are likely to harden amongst certain sections of the traditionally dominant ethnic group. The competition for common wants such as jobs, houses, consumer goods and other objects of status will increasingly be perceived as between "them" and "us" rather than between individuals ...and racial stereotyping will provide the rational for seeing the other group(s) as inferior.

The leader of a British anti-Islamist group said on Friday his populist protest movement, which critics say represents a new far right in Britain, would form a political party in May.

Stephen Lennon, head of the English Defense League (EDL), said the three-year-old grassroots group wanted to move on from holding street demonstrations to contesting elections.

"The British political anti-Islamist party will be launched in May at our Luton demonstration," Lennon told Reuters, saying the new body would be called the Freedom Party. "At the Luton demonstration, the whole country will hear an anti-Islamist political party that gives everyone an option in a non-racist way - the opposite to the British National Party."

The EDL was formed in response to a protest by a small group of radical Muslims who shouted slogans at British soldiers during a homecoming parade in Luton, to the north of London.

While still a small organization, as many as 12,000 people have attended the numerous marches and demonstrations the EDL has staged across England since then. More than 31,000 people have given its Facebook website their backing. Britain's population is about 62 million.

The EDL gained international attention last July after Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who killed 77 people in what he said was an international mission to counter Islam, claimed to have had contact with EDL members and leaders.

The EDL has denied any formal links to Breivik and Lennon rejects the description of his group as far-right, arguing that genuine extremists hate him.

"We hate Nazis, we're anti-Nazi," he said, emphasizing his groups' support for Jews and Israel. "In England, we're the only organization that stands up for the Jewish community."

However, critics and commentators accuse the EDL of being an acceptable face of a new far right, which was not just opposed to violent Islamism as it says but racially opposed to all Muslims, with members who include former soccer hooligans.

Lennon himself was convicted last year over a street brawl involving soccer fans and was also found guilty of assault during an altercation at an EDL rally.The group's rallies have often ended in violent confrontations with anti-fascist organizations. How successful the party will be is unclear.

The far-right British National Party, a nationalist group which wants an end to immigration and the voluntary repatriation of immigrants, won two seats to the European Parliament in 2009.

"If the BNP got two seats, we'll get more than two seats," said Lennon, who added he would not be the new party's leader.

Other populist anti-Islam parties have enjoyed election successes elsewhere in the European Union in recent years, notably the Dutch Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders.

The issue has become prominent in France's presidential election after an al Qaeda-inspired Islamist murdered seven people before being shot dead by police on Thursday.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen asserted after the shootings that entire suburbs had been surrendered to Islamist radicals by negligent politicians.

"The problem is militant Islam and the problem's spreading across Europe like a wildfire," Lennon said. "Brave people like Marine le Pen and brave people like Geert Wilders are prepared to put their lives on the line."

UPDATE: As Edwin Greenwood points out in the comments, this may be a mistake made by Reuters. Lennon may simply have been referring to the existing British Freedom party and the Reuters journalist misconstrued what he was saying.

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced in the immediate aftermath of 23-year-old Merah's attacks and violent end that France would take measures to stamp-out extremist proselytising in prisons.

"We cannot allow our prisons to become seed-beds for the indoctrination of ideologies of hate and terrorism," the president said, demanding a "thorough reflection" on measures to control the threat.

But most experts who spoke Friday said the young man had taken time in prison to radicalise himself, rather than falling victim to recruiters.

Christian Etelin, a lawyer who represented the self-declared Al-Qaeda follower during his earlier teenage career as a petty criminal, said after he was killed in a shoot-out with police that he had become radicalised in jail.

Merah, now 23, was jailed at 19 for a series of thefts and violent crimes and spent two years in jail. After his release he headed to Afghanistan and Pakistan where he claims to have received training from Al-Qaeda.

"It was during his time in prison that he began to radicalise himself," prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters this week.

And the head of France's DCRI domestic intelligence agency, Bernard Squarcini told the daily Le Monde: "According to statements he made during the siege, he self-radicalised in prison, on his own, reading the Koran.

"He said, in any case, everything is in the Koran. So, he was not a member of a network," he said.

Jihad, lyrics:From the steamin Mekong deltaTo the shores of Tonkin bayBombs of yellied gasolineIs making night as bright as dayAnd the mogul's hard tank mastersAdore their new grenadesAnd the D.A.D. find their 9" shellsAre great for border raids

And you can shake your fist at the T.V. setAnd you can slam your hand in the tableAnd you can cry and curseThrough tightlocked teethJust as hard as you are ableBut you can't run away from trouble'Coz there ain't no place that farNo fuel left for the pilgrimsYeah! That's just the way we are

'Coz I'm superfurious I've done it againI reach 50 when I count to 10Jihad, I'm getting madAnd there's no fuel left for the pilgrimsJihad, I'm getting madAnd there's no fuel left for the pilgrims

This is tower again, do you read me? You can get the girls & thevideomachine but the fuel you asked for... You cannot have!

This is almost like a comedy sketch. You can imagine stuff like this back in the old East Bloc - early warning networks to guard against "undemocratic capitalist reactionaries trying to restore formerly discredited bourgeois economic order".

The story of the European genocide is that whenever Europeans have made an organised effort to resist what was happening to them, state power has used to crush it. Sometimes this has been through outright bans; sometimes the use of state infiltrators to undermine the organisation from within; sometimes trivial violations of financial or political regulations have served as a pretext to impose devastating fines; sometimes physical violence from state-sanctioned brownshirt brigades like the UAF has been employed. Or sometimes all of the above. Probably the NPD in Germany - a kind of German equivalent of the BNP - has been subjected to all of this. When they tried to ban it about a decade ago, the attempt failed because it turned out that around one quarter of all the party's senior executives were working for the government as infiltrators! Often they were the ones doing and saying the most obviously objectionable things.

Note there's not a single person or newspaper anywhere within the political spectrum speaking up for freedom of speech and thought. This is exactly what motivated the NSU (National Socialist Underground - the terrorist cell responsible for the kebab murders, which have served as the pretext for the latest ban attempt) to do what they did. They said explicitly in their manifesto that they were fighting for "freedom of thought". But the incident is now being used to suppress freedom of thought some more. And when the Equalities Inquisition tried to ban the BNP a few years ago, there was not a single person or newspaper to speak up for them. It was almost the same with UKIP, although I do remember at least one article in defence of UKIP. UKIP had made some trivial mistake in accepting a small donation and the authorities were going to use that as a pretext for imposing a devastating fine on it. In the end, I think it was only saved when some city financiers agreed to bail them out in return for UKIP adopting a certain policy on some obscure feature of finance law.

It's also funny that the German party Die Linke (The Left) has played a leading role in pushing for this ban. Die Linke is considered a "respectable" party in Germany. They are taken seriously when they talk about defending democracy. This is despite the fact that Die Linke is the direct successor of the East German Communist Party which ran a murderous authoritarian dictatorship for decades!

With growing pressure to ban the far-right NPD party, Germany's federal and state interior ministers have announced they will take concrete steps to review whether it would be legally feasible. The first attempt to ban the party failed in 2003, but German commentators argue the country should try again.

Ever since the neo-Nazi Zwickau terrorist cell came to light last autumn, there has been a heated political debate in Germany about banning the country's far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), which has been linked to the group. But after a failed attempt in 2003, many have been loath to risk legal proceedings a second time. Despite such doubts, Germany's federal and state-level interior ministries announced on Thursday that they would begin taking concrete measures toward banning the party.

Authorities will start systematically collecting legal evidence against the party for the next six months, federal Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said after meeting with his state-level counterparts in Berlin. They must prove to the Federal Constitutional Court that the NPD takes an "aggressive" position against the country's democratic order.

In addition to collecting evidence, informants in the party's highest levels will be deactivated by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, by April 2, Friedrich said. The placement of informants within the party has been seen as the biggest impediment to an NPD ban. Germany's Federal Constitutional Court rejected the 2003 attempt to outlaw the party when it was revealed that intelligence agency informants held senior positions within the NPD. The court argued that it was possible that the party's policies had partly been shaped by informants working for the agency.

Justice Ministry Urges Caution

Whether these measures will ultimately lead to an NPD ban remains uncertain. "Only after such an evaluation can it be decided whether a new attempt to ban the NPD will come about," Friedrich said.

Despite the legal hurdles likely to impede the ban efforts, Ralf Jäger, interior minister for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said banning the NPD remained their goal. "This is the clear signal of today's conference," he said.

But his counterpart in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Holger Stahlknecht, called for careful legal analysis. It's important "that we put judicial feasibility before political will," he said.

Stahlknecht's comment echoed the concerns of Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a long-time skeptic of the ban, who warned against acting too soon. "In the difficult decision over a new NPD ban process, caution should come before speed," she told SPIEGEL ONLINE ahead of the meeting on Thursday. "Premature decisions are not very helpful right now."

On Friday German commentators consider the difficulties and consequences of banning the far-right party.

Left-leaning daily Berliner Zeitung writes:

"Without question, the NPD is xenophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-democratic. Its aims go against the fundamental values of this republic. Germany would be no worse off if the NPD didn't exist. This makes it difficult to bear the thought that the right-wing extremists can spread their ideology with the help of state funding of all things, because they, just like the democratic parties, profit from public party financing."

"At first glance, there is a lot that speaks in favor of seeking a ban on the NPD, as the federal and state interior ministers discussed in Berlin on Thursday. But a second look must follow, soberly weighing the risks of such a ban."

"A ban alone will not defeat far-right extremism in this country. Politicians and the media must be honest with themselves on this point. The fight against the far-right is a task for society as a whole, and one that begins with civil courage, alert police work, and finally the constant political advocacy of democracy and its values. That is often uncomfortable, often troublesome, and sometimes even dangerous -- but that's the price of freedom."

Left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung writes:

"It's a sentence that's often uttered when interior ministers and other politicians discuss a possible ban on the far-right NPD: We can't fail again like we did in 2003, otherwise the damage would be immense."

"If one is honest, though, the damage has already been done. Politicians have maneuvered into a dead end. Already last year the interior ministers agreed to attempt a 'successful NPD ban.' Now the state-funded informants in the party's upper levels will be deactivated, while evidence is collected and legally analyzed until year's end to be certain that a ban can be implemented."

"Further evidence can be collected and a decision once again pushed back for a few months. But in the end the question is: Do we want to ban a party that knowingly accepted violent neo-Nazis in the late 1990s and still welcomes them today? No one can make a 100 percent guarantee that a ban will successful. But there are good reasons to try."

Financial daily Handelsblatt writes:

"Since we found out that a series of violent neo-Nazi crimes raged on undetected for 10 years, the German legal system has faced some of the biggest challenges it has seen in decades. It is a requirement of our community to ensure the safety of those who are afraid of, or exposed to, murderous hounding by neo-Nazis. This is the chief purpose of a party ban."

"But this medicine is not enough to stop right-wing extremism. Our society also needs a living constitution. In this, the protection of human dignity should take top priority. Those who as foreigners or members of religious or ethnic minorities feel they are at risk are living proof that the constitution is under attack. By banning groups that are enemies of the constitution, we deprive them of tolerance for such views."

"If a ban is to succeed, it must be demonstrated that the NPD is unconstitutional in word or deed. An open German society can resist its enemies. But foreigners, religious minorities and other minorities cannot."

Unless you make Participation in Jihad an offence in its own right. That means recognising the specificity and uniqueness of jihad and not continuing to treat it as just another instance of the abstraction called terrorism.

The maternity wards at Dewsbury District are never less than busy and it is a matter of cultural fact that the proportion of Asian deliveries was and is far, far higher than within the indigenous population.

I read in the Sunday Times a while back that between 1991 and 2001 the Indian population in Dewsbury increased by 25% and the Pakistani by 60%, a combination of prolific birthrates and imported spouses and relatives. That growth rate has not diminished in the intervening years and the pressure on the health service is immense.

After the birth of our son my wife was on an open ward and the mother in the next bed was an Asian woman. Witnessing the differences in approaches to new motherhood was instructive in itself but dispiriting in the context of this work. We were doting parents, fascinated by every coo and cry of this little miracle. Visiting times were awaited with eager anticipation, the hospital rule of no more than two visitors per bed strictly adhered to.

It became quickly clear that the mum in the adjacent bed had neither care nor concern for her own child. Its cries were ignored, there was no attempt to feed or change it – the nurses were regarded as hired help to assist this infant through its first days while the mum got some rest. But that was something and nothing really. Not our problem.

More galling was the total disregard for any hospital rules by her family – a situation we saw was incredibly common, and simply tolerated with a resigned shrug by the hospital staff. Her visitors, always and exclusively men it seemed, turned up whenever they wanted, in as many numbers as they cared to see fit. Two to a bed? I saw six on more than one occasion.But it was this habit of turning up when they wanted, sitting there silently round the bed, that eventually caused the greatest offence.

My wife, like most new mums, wanted to feed her child herself and, like many, had struggled initially to get her baby to ‘latch’ onto her nipple, but she persevered and succeeded and took great pride in this most natural of acts. And then one afternoon – out of visiting times so I wasn’t there – as she fed her son, she became uncomfortably aware of furniture being moved.

She looked up from her baby’s face to find the host of men round the adjacent bed had brazenly turned their chairs round to enjoy the sight of a white woman’s exposed breast. I’m not saying that was their sole reason for being there – the opportunity to ogle other women’s breasts – but I couldn’t tell you why they did visit, and at such inopportune times. I never heard them speak to the mother they were visiting. The child was generally in a side room being cared for by nurses. If anyone has a better explanation I’d be glad to hear it.

My wife couldn’t get out of that hospital fast enough and it’s probably a good job that I wasn’t present when the peepshow incident occurred, but then again if I had been, or if any other father had been, I severely doubt that it would have happened at all.

We complained to the hospital staff, as you would expect, and we received the default, disconsolate reply that characterises all such incidents across the entire landscape of cultural exchanges in a town like Dewsbury – that familiar shrug of the shoulders, raised eyebrows and cursory “what can you do?” or an occasional “we’ve mentioned it to management but we’re told to be tolerant to avoid being called racist”.

As so often, the default position, the creeping retreat from a culture with alien values to ours, was maintained and strengthened not by its own proponents but by the gutless white, liberal management class of middle Britain.

Where Islam speads, freedom dies. Sarko is using the pretext of these shootings to suppress French freedoms further. Of course, the context suggests he will use these powers only to deal with jihadist websites. But following the false moral ideal of non-discrimination, these laws will undoubtedly be couched in abstract terms. When the authorities prosecute Muslims using these new laws, they will be accused of Islamophobia. Then, in order to prove they are not discriminatory, they will round up some Counterjihadists or French nationalists and prosecute them too. Even if Sarko's government doesn't do this, the Socialists undoubtedly will the next time they get in. This is exactly the pattern we saw in Britain with the anti-terrorist Prevent programme, originally rolled out to combat Muslim extremism then extended to embrace "all extremism", including people simply making the point that Britain would have been better off if we had never let Muslims or third-worlders in.

Consider how broadly framed the legislation he describes is. Anyone visiting the sites will be prosecuted? So even a Counterjihadist visiting the sites to report critically on them runs the risk of prosecution. Read the description of Forsane Alizza in this CNN story. As far as I know, I am virtually the only person writing in English who ever paid any attention to Forsane Alizza before now. In fact, the facts reported in this CNN story may well have been compiled from the posts on this blog. There was a lot of Google traffic yesterday based on the keywords "Forsane Alizza". But, according to Sarko's new law, I could now be prosecuted just for visiting their website?

If Sarko's plan comes to fruition, this act of jihad violence will have succeeded in disempowering the resistance to jihad. Our freedoms will be yet further circumscribed; the redemptive capacity of our civilisation diminished yet again. Even when the Muslims lose, they win. Under the prevailing set of rules, that is. The only way to change the outcome is to change the rules, and that means challenging the moral principles that underlie them. Discrimination is not wrongful; it is a moral duty. The use of our powers of discrimination to make moral judgements is what defines us as human beings. Only by abandoning the ideal of non-discriminatory, rule-based restraints on the actions of governments - in other words the ideology of human rights - and embracing full-throated democracy instead, can European civilisation save itself.